Goetz Meat Market

In December, the DDA Citizens Advisory Committee hosted a loft tour to get people interested in
living upstairs over downtown stores. When Elsa Goetz Ordway was a girl, it was common. From 1905 to
1913, when the Goetz family ran a meat market at 118 West Liberty (now the Bella Ciao restaurant),
they were just one of many families who lived downtown where they worked.

Ordway's parents, George and Mathilda Goetz, were born in Wurttemberg, Germany, and came to the
United States in 1899. After five years working for a relative who owned a hotel in Niagara Falls,
New York, they moved to Detroit, where George Goetz worked as a butcher. A year later they came to
Ann Arbor with their sons, Willie and George. They opened the Goetz Meat Market on the street level
of the Liberty Street building and moved into the top two stories. Daughter Elsa was born there a
year later, with a Dr. Belser in attendance.

The Goetz's family life was intertwined with the store. Mathilda Goetz prepared the family's
meals in the workroom behind the shop where her husband made bologna and other meat products. The
family's dining room was on the first floor, too, so that they could take care of customers who came
in while they were eating. The Goetzes worked long hours—until almost midnight on Saturdays. In
those days before refrigeration, people shopped on Saturday night for Sunday dinner. On Sundays the
shop was closed, but it was not unusual for a customer to phone and say they were having unexpected
company and could they please come over and get some meat?

Ordway's brother Willie, who eventually took over the business, helped his dad make the products
then considered standard fare for butcher shops—lard, breakfast sausage, bologna, knockwurst, and
frankfurters. Ordway remembers, "My dad would slice the bologna and look at it to see whether it was
done right—like a person at a fair looking at cake texture." He made his frankfurters with natural
casings, "just so," and was upset when people overcooked them and they burst.

Brother George, in delicate health because of a congenital heart defect (he died at twenty-two),
was a photographer. He took pictures of excellent quality despite the slow film and glass negatives
then in use. Many of his photos are reproduced today in local histories. He was also knowledgeable
about electricity; the family had the first electrically lighted Christmas tree in Ann Arbor. To
help his dad, who often carried heavy things up and down the cellar stairs, he wired the cellar
lighting to switch on and off when someone stepped on the upper stair tread. When the light began to
be on when it should have been off, and vice versa, they finally discovered the culprit: the family
cat.

Ordway was too young to work in the store, but she kept busy. She played on the roof of the back
room, which was reached from the second-floor living quarters. Her friends in the neighborhood
included Bernice Staebler, who lived in her parents' hotel, the American House, now the Earle
building, around the corner (Then & Now, May 1993). Riding her tricycle up and down Liberty,
Ordway got to know all the store owners, buying penny candy at the grocery store or a ribbon to put
around her cat's neck at Mack and Company. She recalls that "an employee of Mack and Company made me
a set of large wooden dolls, one of the Ehnises gave me a hand-tooled leather strap for my doll
buggy, and Miss Gundert, the principal of Bach School, taught me how to make outline drawings of
people and animals when she came to buy meat.

Store owners even knew their customers' pets. Dogs were given free bones, and in those days
before leash laws, some came in by themselves to pick them up. Ordway's cat was well known, too -
fortunately. As she explains, "One afternoon a customer who worked for the Ann Arbor Railroad came
into the store after work and said, 'I see your cat is back.' We hadn't known she'd been away. He
told us that he had seen my cat in a boxcar in Toledo and - as that train had been headed for a very
distant place - he had carried her over to a boxcar headed [back to] Ann Arbor."

The Goetz family took good care of their customers, too. The meat was never prepackaged, but hung
in quarter sections, to be cut to customers' exact specifications. Children who came in with their
parents were usually given a slice of bologna. In those days before cars were common, many customers
phoned in their orders, which were delivered by the horse-drawn wagons of Merchants Delivery, a
company that served the smaller stores that didn't have their own delivery services.

In 1913, wanting a break from the store, the Goetz family moved to a house they had built at 549
South First Street and rented the store out, first to Weinmann Geusendorfer, then to Robert Seeger.
They rented the upstairs living quarters to relatives. George Goetz kept a hand in the meat
business, filling in at other butcher shops and helping out their owners by making bologna. He also
supplied veal to meat markers, traveling around in a horse and buggy to buy the calves from farmers.
He died in 1929. Willie, called Bill as an adult, took over the store about 1923. He renamed it
Liberty Market and ran it until he retired in 1952. Since then the building has housed
restaurants—first Leo Ping's, then Leopold Bloom's, Trattoria Bongiovanni, and now Bella Ciao. The
former living quarters are now used as a banquet room (second floor), offices, and storage (third
floor).

A return to the practice of living above one's own business will probably not happen in these
days of chains, franchises, and large corporations. But the upstairs lofts over downtown businesses
can still be made into very desirable apartments. Proponents point out that using downtown's upper
stories in this way can keep the area both more vibrant and safer (with more people out and about
around the clock). And downtown residents have the advantage of being within easy walking distance
of shops, restaurants, and entertainment. Children's author Joan Blos, a member of the DDA advisory
council and herself a downtown resident, says of downtown lofts, "Their somewhat eccentric charm
appeals to many persons of quite different lifestyles and requirements. Renovated lofts have the
potential to provide a useful socioeconomic bridge between the upscale housing of newer buildings
and the affordable housing often associated with the downtown area."

—Grace Shackman

Photo Captions:

About 1923, Bill Goetz (far left, next to partner Frank Livernois) took over the former family
store and renamed it Liberty Market. He ran it until he retired in 1952; after passin through many
uses, the building today is the Bella Ciao restaurant.

Elsa Goetz (later Ordway) about 1910. Born upstairs from the family meat market, she grew up with
Liberty Street as her playground. She bought penny candy and ribbons from nearby stores and one of
the Ehnises contributed a leather strap for her doll's buggy.